8 flaws homebuyers should overlook

people that don't buy a home based on this short list of stupid flaws have no buisness OWNING a home either. 

 

it's all simple home maintenance.  if it scares you, don't buy

I bought a 70s museum two years ago.  Looking past the dark wood paneling, I could see the potential this Cape Cod has.  Two years later, it looks way different and I get so many compliments on how nice it looks.  Mostly, it's been painted inside and that alone made a huge difference.

Having been a residential contractor for over 30 years I feel free to say that that majority of people in the US have no business owning a house
The lack of basic knowledge about the material world (which a house is) that the average American possesses is so apalingly low that most people should rent and let someone else worry about the upkeep

The one flaw we couldn't overlook was my husband's hitting his head on the ceiling in the upstairs bedrooms of an old renovated cape cod and he is only 6'2".  That and no closets at all, just cubby holes in the wall.

I boughtn a small house.  It will be paid off in 8 year's.  I bought what I could afford, but it will take time on the inside, to get it fix up, the way I want.  I will have to rewallpaper the wall's and new wall too wall rug's.   But I can live with it.

First off, as someone who is trying to buy, I will attest to the fact that we are not currently in a "buyer's market".  Most of what's out there, is either bank owned crap (much of which should be condemned) or seriously overpriced. 

Secondly, since when can a person get a mortgage to buy a house that with a heating system that doesn't work.

Third, only a complete moron wouldn't consider a house because of its color...

Nowadays people are meaner & stingier  when spending money.

I hope I can avoid their pain and not become this stupid.

I just love watching the shoppers who want the cookie cutter cardboard box home in a boring neighborhood just because it has granite counter tops.
But they will pass up a solid old home in a beautiful neighborhood because it has ugly wallpaper and an old refrigerator.
I guess if they are that dumb, they deserve what they get.

Most of this stuff is just good sense--paint, curtains, and carpet are all pretty easy fixes.  My first house, purchased at the ripe old age of 22, was a great learning experience on so many of these things.

Getting rid of the 60's paneling and 70's carpet was easy.  We did, however, discover that the paneling was there for a good reason--the original plaster lathe walls where lumpy and falling apart.  A coat of paint doesn't cover that up and new sheet rock is a fair bit bigger project than repainting.

Heating system....not so much.  It could need a ten dollar blower motor, or a two hundred fifty dollar boiler, or what have you---or it could be so old that it's not worth fixing, or a symptom of a much deeper problem.  As an example, my first house needed a blower motor, the furnace was a Chrysler(did you know Chrysler even made furnaces?!).  The motor was cheap, the furnace was a gas guzzling old Chrysler complete with the light blue paint and gold hood ornament.  Turns out it was a retrofit coal furnace, which explained the coal residue still apparent in the basement and coal still present in the coal room(yes, it still had a coal room).

If it's cheap and easy, why aren't they selling a house with a working heating system?

If moldy bathroom grout exists, why isn't it cleaned up before showing?  If it's something like the picture in the article, surely a person could have the good sense to overlook it, an old house getting a green spot under the tub spigot is hardly cause for concern.  In the case of the house I bought, though, it turned out that it was caused by an ancient cast iron plumbing throughout.  Not a cheap fix.

Cabinet facing isn't necessarily cheap.  If a house is old and the cabinets are original, it's quite likely that they are an odd size, possibly not even geometrically perpendicular.  Custom cabinets are quite expensive, and originals can be difficult to assess.  The old house I was in was out of square three quarters of an inch from one end of the cabinet to the other, and the original doors had twenty three(really!) layers of paint on them.  Once the paint was removed, the doors wound up being made of glued wood scraps and we wound up simply repainting them.  The countertop also wound up being three inches more shallow than standard.

Back then, we bought the place cheap(28k), so learning the hard way wasn't quite so painful.  If I'd chosen to overlook this stuff on a hundred thousand dollar plus investment, though.......that would have been a pretty rough discovery.

For those selling a house, $500.00 worth of neutral paint will bring $5000.00 back. Also empty your overflowing closets. And please clean the potty and sinks. You are throwing out money by thinking I will leave it for the next guy. I have been able to increase my sales by 10s of thousands of dollars through out the years just making things neat and clean.